The Government Wants to See Your Papers

"Stop what you're doing. Take off that tool belt and hard hat-let's see some ID. Why? Because we don't think you're a citizen. Now show us your papers. This kind of behavior by government officials is now legal in the United States. Yesterday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court allowed ICE officials to conduct roving patrols and use racial profiling to stop and detain people for no other reason than their skin color,"

"But wait, you might object. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Did the Court explain why that protection apparently no longer applies to you if you're a day laborer or running a fruit stand? Good luck with that: This Court's majority doesn't explain itself to anyone. It merely lets stand or overturns the decisions of lower courts-lately, almost always in favor of expanding the power of, and corroding any checks on, President Donald Trump."

"Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo is a case from Los Angeles about whether ICE can stop people because of a suspicion of their being in the United States illegally, based solely, as SCOTUSblog summarized it, on any combination of four factors: a person's "'apparent race or ethnicity,' speaking in Spanish or accented English, being present at a location where undocumented immigrants 'are known to gather' (such as pickup spots for day laborers), and working at specific jobs, such as landscaping or construction.""

A Supreme Court decision allows ICE to perform roving patrols and stop or detain people based on a combination of appearance, language, location, and occupation. The ruling permits racial profiling by immigration officials at sites where undocumented immigrants are known to gather, such as day-labor pickup spots, and targets workers in occupations like landscaping and construction. A prior lower-court injunction had barred such stops after a U.S. citizen's wrongful targeting. The decision reflects a conservative majority trend that expands executive power and weakens judicial checks on immigration enforcement and civil-liberties protections.

Read at The Atlantic